Federal parties to reveal their urban agendas to Canada’s mayors at Edmonton conference

Toronto Mayor John Tory says it’s a breakthrough to have leaders addressing the Federation of Canadian Municipalities ahead of fall election.

Thestar.com
June 4, 2015
By Les Whittington

Toronto Mayor John Tory says federal political parties have gotten the message that Canada’s cities have been neglected by Ottawa for too long and it could be a deciding in factor in this fall’s election.

“Overall, if you look at the last two or three decades, there has been a gross underinvestment in cities, which are the economic engine of the country and where 80 per cent of Canadians now live,” he said at a meeting of the country’s urban leaders.

The mayors will receive closed-door presentations from NDP urban affairs critic Matthew Kellway, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Green Party’s Elizabeth May on each party’s positions on cities issues. The Conservatives will be represented by Finance Minister Joe Oliver, who addresses the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference Friday.

Tory said it’s a breakthrough to have the federal parties coming before FCM to lay out their urban agendas in advance of the Oct. 19 federal election.

“They know we’re going to be measuring how they do and reporting on that to the people we represent in the cities,” he told the Star.

“The NDP has said they would do a bit more, a bit faster” to help cities than is currently being done by Ottawa, Tory noted. In a story in the Star Thursday, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair revealed if elected his party would boost overall federal spending for “core infrastructure” in municipalities to $3.7 billion annually.

Tory said the parties’ approaches may differ but the important thing is that a permanent federal fund for public transit in cities, announced by Oliver in this year’s budget, is becoming an accepted plank in each party’s campaign commitments.

“You want this to become table stakes, so that all parties are acknowledging for the first time in the history of the country the need to have such a fund and make it permanent and acknowledge by so doing the role the federal government does have in providing proper public transportation for our cities,” he said.

In the April 21 budget, Oliver said the federal government will set up a permanent transit fund, beginning with $250 million in 2017, $500 million in 2018 and $1 billion a year as of 2019.

In addition to Oliver, FCM will hear from Trudeau on Friday and Mulcair on Saturday.